


Slaughtering Butterflies

by Trixen



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 04:37:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4692329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trixen/pseuds/Trixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The aftermath and its migrations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slaughtering Butterflies

It has all been beyond belief.   
  
Even for Neptune.  
  
+  
  
Veronica sees the first Monarch in the sweltering early days of July. She is avoiding the sidewalk near the hotel, and the pavement is steaming with her efforts. She knows that they cleaned it all up, but sometimes she is sure she spots an eye, or an entrail or a _cell_ , a cell of him and it is as if she is walking on the roof of Hell and he is staring up at her. If she slips, she’s not sure which way she’ll go. If she slips, she’ll skin her palms and while she is not afraid of that hurt, Veronica hates the act. The act of falling.  
  
“The butterflies are coming,” the doorman says, and points to the sky.   
  
Veronica looks at him, startled. She smiles. “Ahh, but where are the British?”  
  
He just blinks at her.  
  
“I get that a lot,” she says, going up the stairs.   
  
Logan should be waiting for her, but all she finds is Dick, slouched on the sofa, a joint balanced carefully between the first two fingers of his right hand. He looks up.  
  
“Hey Winnie,” he greets her dully. “Kevin’s in the bathroom so the Wonder Years’ll have to wait till he’s done taking a leak.”  
  
She winces. Not at his words, but at his tone. “How’s the reefer madness?”  
  
“Solid. You can have some as long as you don’t screw up rotation.”  
  
“ _Thanks_ ,” she drawls, and drops her bag on the floor by the bar. “But somehow I’ve never gotten into the stoner thing. Hate getting the smell of out of my hair.”  
  
“Whatever.”   
  
Veronica walks behind the couch and notices that he is staring at the TV screen. The sound is off, and the bright, garish colors are flickering across his face. After long shifts at Java, she usually holes up next to him, stuffing her face with ice cream or popcorn, waiting for Logan to come home. All Dick will watch lately is _Titanic_ and while Veronica finds Leonardo DiCaprio circa 1997 about as appealing as juggling with razor blades, she still watches it with him.   
  
“Infomercials?” she asks. “What happened to Jack and Rose?”  
  
“They died,” he says flatly.  
  
“Uh huh. How?”  
  
“The same way, over and over.” Dick sounds tired, and lifts the tube of paper to his lips, inhaling. It smells of sickness. “There’s a dollar in my pocket, Ronnie. Buy a clue. I don’t want to talk.”  
  
“Do you want to _sing_?” she stares at the back of his neck, hears him laugh quietly.  
  
“Dude, you can be such a pest.”  
  
“It’s part of my charm.”  
  
“It’s only charming when you’re in front of me so I can see your tits.”   
  
She doesn’t say anything more because he is the same jackass, but _meaner_ now, and that depresses her. Each time she looks at him, her mouth floods with bile and she tastes the Chlamydia, clamoring inside her flesh. It isn’t his fault, it really isn’t, but neither is it hers – and there is just no one left to blame. Cassidy made sure of that, smearing himself on the hood of a car so that secrets would be kept and lies would be told.   
  
That night is still spinning on a dime for her. She sees so many possible futures, so many ways things could have gone, and now, when she wakes up to the smell of pancakes burning, she has to remind herself that she is not back there. She is not in _that_ morning. She has to tell herself to keep.it.together.   
  
“Logan?” she calls, walking into his bedroom. The bed is still unmade, and she flushes at the damp intimacy of that. The shower is running in the bathroom, and if it had been Duncan, she might have gone in and joined him. But it’s Logan, and he terrifies her, and so she perches on the edge of the bed.   
  
She remembers the night before. The room still smells of it.  
  
Sex with Duncan was _nice_. Sex with Logan is a thousand things, none of which are _nice_ and most of which embarrass Veronica and make her want to crawl inside of herself and never return. It is dirty when he whispers for her to _roll over_ and holds her wrists above her head, until she cannot smell anything but herself on the hot sheets. It is messy when she is under the covers, kneeling between his thighs and exploring. She would wipe her chin off afterward, but he _likes_ the mess and that is even more embarrassing. It is sweaty when the radiator breaks in the middle of the night and heat crowds the windows, soaking them both. But he still won’t let go of her. And it is so so right when he suddenly looks into her eyes, like he does sometimes just as he is about come, and everything in her flares bright as she realizes that she is here and she is with _Logan_ and thank God, thank God, she hasn’t let this spin up and away from her.  
  
“Hey,” Logan says quietly from the bathroom door.  
  
Veronica looks up. He has a towel looped around his hips and he’s rubbing his hair, just above his left ear. It is a gesture so familiar that it makes the back of her throat sting.   
  
“You left me alone with Dick,” she says. “Penalty of… what was it? Oh. Death.”  
  
He smiles faintly, takes a step toward her. “By?”  
  
“Suic-- nevermind, joke’s over.” She is hasty, smiling. But she notices his mouth drop, compress, become white flesh over teeth. She hates that migration. “How was the shower? Steamy?”  
  
“A disappointment,” he says.  
  
“Why’s that?”  
  
“You weren’t in it.”  
  
Veronica flushes. “I’m sure I was there in spirit.”  
  
“You know me,” he says softly, enfolding her in his arms. “I prefer ‘in body’.”  
  
She feels wet skin against her clothes and she feels _him_ through the towel and it still surprises her, how hot and tight she gets, just from that. She is anxious suddenly; slippery and ephemeral, and clings to him, lifting her chin so he will kiss her. But he doesn’t.  
  
“What’s wrong, Veronica?”  
  
“Kiss me,” she begs, and she is not a begging kind of girl, but he brings that out in her. Suddenly, she is frenzied. Seems the temporal side of things, and hates that. She’s never been into measurement, and doesn’t want to start now. “Please?”  
  
He bends his head, presses a kiss to her mouth. It is damp and warm, a chaste kiss that tastes of burning sugar. His teeth scrape her lips, a promise of what will come between sheets in hot darkness.   
  
“You don’t have to ask.”  
  
“Apparently I do,” Veronica teases shakily. “The puppy eyes weren’t working.”  
  
“Touche,” he drawls. “Are mine working now?”  
  
“I don’t know,” her voice breaks. “What do you want?”  
  
“The girl asks such silly questions.”   
  
He takes her to bed.  
  
+  
  
Veronica brings Mac coffee – black with lots of sugar – and sits down next to her at the little corner table. Mac has her laptop with her, a distraction. She brings up graphic art websites, her hands shaking as she grips the coffee cup.   
  
“This woman paints with her blood.”  
  
“Blood?” Veronica echoes. “Um.”  
  
“Her—menstrual blood.”  
  
“Isn’t that called ‘going too far for your craft’?”  
  
“I think the exact definition is a ‘woman who runs with wolves’.”  
  
Veronica flinches. “It still sounds a little too messy for me.”  
  
“You’re a wolf woman. Own it.” Mac laughs but then stops, suddenly, horribly.   
  
“Don’t stop,” she says softly.  
  
“I shouldn’t be laughing,” Mac answers. Her voice is tight. “Not after…”  
  
“We’ve been Keyser Sozed.” She looks at Mac bleakly. “It’ll take some getting used to.”  
  
“I don’t know how to look at things anymore,” Mac says and her whole body is shaking now. “Like, how to place Cassidy in memories. I still think of him as my boyfriend. Like, kissing another boy would seem like—cheating. Is that weird?”  
  
“Haven’t you heard? Weird is the new normal.”  
  
“I guess so.” Mac points to the computer screen. “Look at menstrual girl. At least she saves money on tampons.”  
  
Veronica reaches out, holds her close. “See? A joke. That means progress.”  
  
+  
  
When it hits her, it hits her hard. Veronica spends three days at the end of August, sprawled out in Logan’s bed - _their_ bed – sleeping off the nightmare. Her sleeps have always been like deaths. Difficult to wake from. Surrounded by hallways of dreams and just around every corner, is Lilly. Oh, Lilly. Veronica misses her like she would a piece of herself, a torso, or an ambition torn to shreds. Lilly was her shadows, her brightness. Lilly was the chances she never took and Lilly was. Oh, and Lilly _was_.   
  
In those three days and nights, she struggles through layers to be reborn. She wakes during long nights, seeking the sharp male scent of him, still mourning for all of the dead, for the dangerous boy and the blonde girl. She spins into his arms, feeling him glow against her, his penis blunt against her belly. She is too dizzy with sleep to be scared of that pressure, that sexual truth of Logan, how it will not be denied – how _he_ will not be denied.   
  
“You ok?” he mumbles, naked in her arms. “Veronica?”  
  
She opens her legs and there is a slight _pop_ and then he is inside of her. It hurts with wonderful pleasurepain, that raw ache that always takes her by surprise. And as he moves inside of her, rasping her nipples with the hair on his chest, she cries – silently – still mourning.   
  
The way she grieves has changed. The gaping wound left by Lilly has been tempered by time. For Duncan, it is no longer the old pain she remembers so well– the feeling of ‘oh, but we should have _been_.’ Veronica knows that they just could not have been – and it is not only her dream that tells her this. It is that when he left – she could have gone with him. She could have gotten away. Migrated South. But she didn’t.  
  
She remembers how, this morning, she got up only once - to get a glass of water and pee. Her limbs felt sluggish, her skin was dry, her hair was greasy. She walked over to the window, pressed her nose against the glass. Light was scissoring the sky in two, and there was a bloody cloud over Neptune. Thousands of them, winging through the air, making that final voyage.   
  
Logan gasps, his sperm rushing into the dark heart of her.  
  
“Veronica,” he pants a few moments later, his mouth against her neck, his palm gentle but insistent between her thighs.   
  
She wants to laugh, or weep, or do _something_ \-- but she is afraid she will tell him she loves him, and so she bites her lip until she tastes blood. She wants to tell him she would follow him to the ends of the earth— say silly things and have them answered back with the frenetic intensity Logan is so good at. She is worried for their future, worried she cannot stop the ruination or the blood-shed. But she remembers the journey she saw this morning and wonders if the Monarchs know they will never see home again.  
  
“Veronica?”   
  
“Yes?” she touches his face in the darkness.  
  
“You sound funny.”  
  
“Just thinking.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“Butterflies.”  
  
 **~ Finis**


End file.
